Resident cultivates biggest pumpkins

Anthony Watson stands in his backyard in Kensington with the giant pumpkin he grew this year. He estimates its weight to be about 400 pounds, but for Watson, who routinely enters giant pumpkins in contests and is a member of the Pennsylvania Giant Pumpkin Growers Association, that's 300 pounds less than the gourd he grew last year.

The roughly-400-pound pumpkin in Anthony Watson's backyard is a pretty big disappointment.

"It was so wet this spring, I just kind of gave up on it," Watson said, excusing his small crop, which reigns pale yellow over a tangle of yard-engulfing vines. "It just didn't really have a chance."

Four-hundred pounds sounds like plenty of pumpkin to most people, but last year, Kensington's champion pumpkin grower nurtured a 713-pound Atlantic Giant — possibly the heaviest recorded pumpkin grown in Maryland. Watson also grew a 435-pounder, in the ballpark of what he estimates this year's gourd to weigh, in just 35 days.

But this year, the wet spring set Watson back in his quest for a giant gourd, and what would have been the first Giant Pumpkin Weigh-Off held by the Maryland Department of Agriculture was canceled after Watson was the lone entrant.

"It's just that there's no one around here does it," said Watson, who can count on one hand the number of fellow Marylanders he has met that share his passion for gourds.

That's why his 713-pound monster is only the unofficial state champion—there is no official Maryland contest. Watson usually journeys to Pennsylvania with his produce to put it to the test at the Pennsylvania Giant Pumpkin Growers Association Weigh-Off, where last year the 713-pounder placed 16th against a few pumpkins that weighed over 1,000 pounds.

Watson got into the monster-growing business after seeing a TV special about 15 years ago, and said he does it for the "oohs and ahhs."

But pumpkin growing contests are serious business—top prize can be $1,000, and prize-winning pumpkin seeds can sell for up to $1 a piece. Entrants must specify the pedigree of their pumpkin, naming where the parent seed came from for the judges.

Watson said caring for the pumpkin takes as much as 30 minutes a day in weeding, feeding, turning the pumpkin and trimming off would-be vine rivals that might steal nutrients away from the prized gourd. Watson keeps bees in his yard as well, but said he doesn't "trust them to pollinate" the pumpkin; he does so by hand.

"They're like little pets. Some people are real fanatical about the care and maintenance. Some people go to extreme lengths to ensure their pumpkin is safe, not just from nature but from people. I thought I had spies coming to look at my pumpkin a couple years back with the county fair coming along," Watson said, circling his finger around his head at the memory. "It was just bologna."

Robin Hirst, Watson's Kensington neighbor, is one of about a dozen friends that have helped him move his beasts from garden to pickup truck in preparation for a contest.

"Very big, they're very tough to move," said Hirst. "It's a very large tarp and eight or so guys will get around the tarp and go around and try not to break it."

Then the pumpkin is loaded on a pallet, the pallet into the pickup. The bed of the truck is filled with blankets, inflated inner-tubes and pillows to cushion the pumpkin on its journey.

Watson said he probably won't be making such a trip this year to Pennsylvania; the 400-pound pumpkin is just not up to snuff.

"I think it's all about bragging rights. The money is good, but it's bragging rights," Watson said. "I'm competing with myself more or less; I just want to do better than I did the year before."